Thank you everybody so much for your friendly and most appreciated replies! It has made my day to hear that there is justified cause for hope! :-)
@Flash: Gruezi und Lieben Dank for your generous offer! Ist ja super, dass es hier noch mehr Deutsche gibt. So I assume you must have managed to set your Xy to German standard! Btw: the "sharp-s" or "ess-zett" has actually not been dropped even after the latest reform ;-) I will definteley drop you an email!
From: Flash
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, November 1, 2010 9:46:04 PM
Subject: Re: Beginner's question + Euroscript.
Grueazi Ludwig!
Du bist in guten Haenden. You will find answers to all your questions here. There are at least two among us who speak German--Wolfgang (native) and myself (fluent second language), so anything not clear to you, address in German to myself or Wolfgang.
Manuals are available in pdf format--Brian Henderson is the man to contact.
As for reprogramming your keyboard, umlauts are easy to do; ess-zett will look like a Greek beta, if that is acceptable (why are you using it now--post-Rechtsschreibreform?). I will help walk you through the process, off list (email me directly, or Skype). ASCII does not do German quote marks, but ANSI may do--please chime here, those of you with the ANSI upgrade. Failing that, we can surely find some other solution (e.g., import to some layout program, such as Pagemaker or Nota Bene, which has a Xywrite import filter which converts English quotes to German ones).
I'm not the printer or
bibliography specialist on this list, but others will chime in. To my knowledge, most printer problems have been solved, and bibliographies can be formatted to any standard.
m f G,
Flash
Bern